


Humidity

by imsfire



Series: Celebrate Rogue One characters 2018 [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian's thoughts about home in the early days of the Massassi base, Character Study, Gen, Home, Memories, Pre-Rogue One, reminders of childhood, the evocative effect of smells and sensations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 23:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14904522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: The Rebels have established a new base on Yavin 4.  Captain Cassian Andor arrives there for the first time, and finds something faintly haunting about the atmosphere of his new home.





	Humidity

**Author's Note:**

> For day two of week two of Celebrate Rogue One; theme, Cassian + Home.

It takes him a while to figure it out. On the surface there’s nothing at all about their new base to remind him of home. 

Fest had been cold, perpetually cold, a world made of the many tones of winter.  Yavin 4 is hot and humid, green and gold and bursting with life.  For the whole of each long day the new base basks in sunshine.  Wherever he looks there’s colour and movement.  Fest was all snow and ash, a stained silence; slag heaps and a long grey thaw.  For a scant two months of the year the cloud cover broke enough to let through glimpses of pale sky and occasional rays of sunlight, bright on the wet ground but too weak to warm him.

He remembers the sparkles on the tips of melting icicles; how beautiful, and how icy cold they were.  The light here is brilliant and ubiquitous, not a rarity to be treasured, and every part of Massassi Base is warm, or hot, or outright broiling.  Short of creeping into a chiller in the mess hall kitchens, there’s nowhere he can cool off.  It’s nothing like home; yet there’s something indefinable, visceral, familiar at a level far below reason.  

Cassian cannot place it at all, and it frustrates him.  His job is to notice and analyse, to always spot the details; not to be baffled like this.  The unnoticed detail can be very dangerous, in his world.

It’s like a sensory déjà-vu, a thing he can’t name, only feel somehow, with his fingertips and the tip of his tongue, his nostrils flaring  at something in the air. 

That’s it; it’s something in the air.  Yavin 4 is humid, and even with dehumidifiers panting constantly the stones walls of the pyramids are permanently damp.  Condensation gathers on plastene window frames, and algae and moulds grow freely if equipment or clothing is put away without due care.   Even with absorbent silicone ribbons tied to each hanger and laid inside each drawer, the jackets and shirts inside his locker feel clammy to the touch when he takes them out, despite the heat.  It’s there every morning as he dresses, the feel of cold fabric against his skin, of garments that seem to radiate their own inner chill like an ambience; and as Cassian fiddles the cold collar straight and fights an unintentional shiver, it’s all, suddenly, intensely familiar.

Clothes at home were always slightly damp, just like this. That faint sensation like rain-breath on his skin; and his mother saying _Run about to warm up now, my darling._

Cassian holds up the fabric of the shirt to his nostrils.  And there it is, musty, faintly yeasty, right on the edge of being undetectable; the smell of mildew.

He had allowed himself a single indulgent thought as he got off the transport.   _Home._  A new base, and with luck a place to come back to many times, from many missions.  A safe place, somewhere to decompress, store his few belongings, be among familiar faces.  That’s as much as he can hope for, from a home, now. 

It seems it’s also going to be a place where he needs to damp-proof his foot-locker.  But he’ll cope with that, even find it comforting, now he’s identified the familiar thing.  Yavin 4 is nothing like Fest; but it will be; and it will be his home.


End file.
